Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House condemn the Federal Government for:

(1)

failing to adequately fund healthcare in Australia;

(2)

its role in causing the current doctor and nurse shortage in Australia; and

(3)

failing to adequately address this shortage.

The health of the nation is expensive, but everyone from economists through to the public know that it is more cost effective to get your health system right and keep people living and working healthily rather than making the odd saving and letting things deteriorate. For the national economy to be healthy we need to adequately invest in our own health. This means money being put where it is strategically needed; it means managing the nation’s health system and ensuring the supply of the health workforce.

The federal government’s record in this regard, though, is not one that most Australians would applaud. The 2006-07 federal budget gave us a double whammy. While health expenditure decreases as a proportion of government spending overall, it also fails keep up with health inflation. So the federal budget is actually decreasing this government’s investment in health and leaving us with a shrunken share of health funding which is, in itself, of decreasing value. This means poorer health outcomes for Australians.

What the budget did advance was the agenda of the Council of Australian Governments. Sixty-two per cent of the total health budget concerns measures driven by COAG. This is somewhat ironic. The last time the government and the states negotiated hospital funding, the federal government ripped $1 billion off the table. But we have seen the states step in and take over the national health agenda. COAG measures of late largely stem from the report of the Productivity Commission that was released in January 2006 which identified a health system with serious and substantial shortcomings. Areas within which the federal government’s game has been found lacking are: improving preventative health care, increasing the number of training places and retaining more of those currently employed and those who will re-enter the workforce.

There has been a widespread and long-term acknowledgement of shortages in workforce supply, especially in the fields of general practice, medical specialty areas, dentistry and nursing. Naturally there are many and varied factors that have brought this to be. As in many industries, and in Australia’s population as a whole, the health industry’s workforce is ageing. It is estimated that one quarter of the existing nursing profession will retire in the next 15 years. Ageing doctors are tending to work fewer hours and I am sure many suspend their careers for family reasons. Health industry professionals are facing increasing workplace demands and, in cases, poor professional and financial rewards are resulting in more and more qualified professionals opting out to make alternative careers for themselves, which increases the pressures on those who remain within the industry.

Poor planning and insufficient investment are also playing their part. Take the nursing profession: the current estimate is a shortfall of 31,000 in nursing. That is increasing every year but over one-third of qualified applicants for university nursing places are being turned away, refused entry to the profession and refused a role in sustaining and strengthening the overall health workforce. And while these hopeful Australians are turned away by the federal government’s failure to adequately support its own health system, this same government bends over backwards to bring 2,500 nurses into Australia on temporary work visas in 2005-06 alone. The lack of planning and investment is also evident in the medical profession. With national shortages of GPs, the government’s bureaucratic bungling has caused a queue of 1,200 doctors waiting for Medicare provider numbers. And while this remains unaddressed, the government again pulls out its 457 visa card.

The number of doctors recruited from overseas last year included 980 general medical practitioners, and the overall number has risen in the last 10 years by some 30-plus per cent so that now some 25 per cent of the medical workforce comprises doctors trained overseas. Still, shortages remain and this government’s failure to adequately plan, invest in and support its own health industry remains evident. The Productivity Commission identified these shortcomings and flagged the necessity for broad health policy and health funding reforms.

As no-one else is prepared to, we have witnessed COAG drive the health agenda in this country. We have seen state governments driving the higher education sector to increase numbers in certain health professions, not the federal government which is responsible. We have a federal government which has put down its pen, lent back in its chair and effectively encouraged the states to gather around the desk and perform the federal government’s own job and advance the national health workforce agenda. If the government says, as it does, that dental health is not their thing, not their fault and someone else’s problem, then how can the minister’s own call in recent months for the federal government to take over hospitals be greeted with anything but mirth?

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